Excalibur a5-6 Page 15

  “I saw a mothership,” Duncan said. “I was inside it. There were bouncers in cradles.”

  “The main hold of a mothership,” Garlin said. “Similar to what was found inside the one at Area 51.” “Yes.”

  “What else?”

  “I saw the Ark.” Duncan closed her eyes, replaying the vision. “An Airlia was putting the Grail inside of it. They put it on board a bouncer. The large bay doors opened. We were about a mile up in the air. We were over water. I saw a talon fly by. The bouncers began flying out of the hold. Going in different directions.” She fell silent for a moment, her face tight as she drew up the memory.

  “Perhaps that is how the Airlia arrived here,” Garlin said, “and began—”

  Duncan held up a hand. “No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t how they arrived here. Because when the talon passed by below the hold I saw its shadows.”

  Garlin frowned. “What?”

  “Shadows,” Duncan said. “Plural. There were two suns in the sky of this planet. It wasn’t Earth.”

  “It makes sense the Airlia would have traveled to other worlds,” Garlin said. “But taking a Grail and an Ark to other worlds?” Duncan asked.

  “Interesting,” Garlin said. “Two suns. We’re going to run a full-body MRI on you.”

  Duncan seemed resigned. “What do you hope to discover doing that?”

  “We have Majestic’s EDOM data. We want to see if you’ve been—” He paused, searching for the right word, but Duncan interrupted with a sharp laugh. “Changed?”

  “We know you’ve been changed by the Grail,” Garlin said. “We want to find out what else has been done to you. Before the Grail.”

  Pearl Harbor

  If a nanovirus could be disappointed, the collective swarm that controlled the humans at Pearl Harbor would be expressing that emotion. The hope had been to catch the remaining American fleet in the Pacific in the harbor and absorb the ships and crews into the Alien Fleet that was still approaching. With that combined might, the next step would be a multipronged assault on the West Coast of the United States.

  Instead, the harbor was empty, everything that could move having gone to sea. As per commands from Easter Island, scout planes were sent out searching while the nanovirus spread, taking over all shore personnel. Civilians were ignored for the time being as they had no useful skills and there was no present need for cannon fodder. The exception was any type of communications off the island. All radio, telephone, TV, and satellite transmitters were seized, the personnel running them absorbed via the nanovirus. Oahu was cut off from the rest of the world. The other islands in the Hawaiian chain held little interest for Aspasia’s Shadow and were ignored.

  In the hills above Pearl Harbor, members of a few Special Forces A-Teams and a couple of SEAL squads crouched in the jungle and observed, radioing reports back to both the fleet and the United States. The reports were intercepted by the alien forces, and squads of infected Marines began to spread out from Pearl Harbor, searching for the teams.

  In the harbor itself, the nanovirus did find one ship of the line, albeit not in working order. That, however, was more of a challenge than a problem. The nanovirus began constructing nanomachines that went to work on the submerged ship.

  Kathmandu, Nepal

  McGraw and Olivetti arrived in the middle of the night, the F-14 Tomcat landing on the main runway at Tribhuvan International Airport exactly as programmed by the guardian. Their incisions were healed with the aid of the nanovirus and the adjustments that had been made to their bodies had been adapted to. As the plane came to a halt, the two SEALs saw the headlights of a vehicle approaching. They slid back the canopy and stiffly climbed out of the aircraft.

  McGraw had an MP-5 submachine gun and as a pickup truck pulled up the plane, he slid back the bolt, loading a round into the chamber. A man got out of the truck, yelling something in Nepalese, obviously not pleased with the middle-of-the-night arrival. McGraw shot him through the forehead.

  The two SEALs pulled their gear out of the plane and threw it in the back of the pickup. There didn’t appear to be any other activity at the airfield given the late hour. McGraw slipped on a set of night-vision goggles as he got behind the wheel of the truck. He turned the headlights off and the goggles on as Olivetti got in the passenger side.

  McGraw scanned the airfield, then spotted what he was looking for: a pair of helicopters parked near a hangar. He drove the truck over to the choppers. One was a vintage Russian-made MI-17, a large cargo chopper. The other was more modern, a French-made Ecureuil AS350B.

  The two men paused, looking at the two for a moment, then they loaded their gear in the back of the Ecuruil. McGraw went over to the hangar and broke in. He found an office in one corner. Searching the top of the desk, he found a list of phone numbers and names. He ran his finger down until he found the Nepalese word for pilot.

  He dialed the number and when a confused voice answered, he simply said the Nepalese word for airport, then hung up.

  Twenty minutes later, headlights cut through the night, approaching the hangar.

  A door opened and an angry man stepped out, yelling in Nepalese and looking about in the darkness. Olivetti stepped up next to the man, shutting him up by the succinct method of slamming the barrel of the MP-5 across the man’s mouth, smashing teeth.

  The pilot dropped to his knees, hands going to his mouth, blood gushing out. Olivetti put the muzzle of the submachine gun next to the pilot’s head, finger on the trigger. McGraw knelt in front of the pilot, spreading a map on the tarmac, shining a flashlight on it.

  “Sagamartha,” McGraw said, tapping a spot on the map. The man looked up, confused.

  “Sagamartha,” McGraw repeated, then pointed at himself, Olivetti, then at the helicopter, and finally at the pilot. Then he pointed to the northeast.

  The pilot shook his head, a movement that was cut short by Olivetti jabbing the muzzle sharply against the man’s temple. The man said something in Nepalese. When the pilot realized they didn’t understand, he thought for a moment, then pointed at the helicopter, indicating he needed to get something.

  McGraw gestured and Olivetti let the man get up. They walked over to the helicopter and the pilot opened the door, then pulled out a logbook. He flipped through until he came to a certain page. He shoved it in front of McGraw, his finger on a certain part. A number and letter: 6100M.

  Then the pilot put his finger on the map, at the same point that McGraw had pointed to. “Sagamartha,” the pilot said, and tapped the number: 8848M. He then waved one hand horizontally and shook his head.

  McGraw’s expression didn’t change. He ran his finger along a road that ran east out of Kathmandu, then turned to the north, crossed the border into Tibet, then looped around again to the east. His finger came to a halt north of Everest.

  The pilot frowned, started to say something, then realized the situation and his mouth snapped shut. McGraw pointed toward the helicopter, then jerked his thumb up. Olivetti added emphasis by jamming the muzzle of the MP-5 into the pilot’s ribs hard enough to cause him to double over. Cursing, the pilot climbed into the pilot’s seat and strapped himself in, as the two SEALs climbed in and shut the doors. The pilot started the engines.

  Pethang Ringmo, Tibet

  A cold wind blew from the south across the stone veranda that faced the army barracks. It was always cold there and the air was thin at over a mile-and-a-half-high altitude. The barracks overlooked the small village of Pethang Ringmo, where less than a hundred hardy souls lived. The village was at the end of an often-washed-out track that could be negotiated in good weather by a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

  Despite centuries of self-rule, Tibet was occupied in 1950 as Communist China sought to expand its sphere of influence. For nine years an uneasy peace existed in the land as the Dalai Lama tried to rule in conjunction with the invaders. That changed in 1959 when the country rose up against the interlopers. Thousands of Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama escaped, seeking asylum in India.<
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  It’s estimated that since that time, over a million Tibetans who were left behind have died as a result of the occupation and the attempts by China to make it a Chinese province. It is believed that these efforts at genocide and repopulation have succeeded to the point where there are a million more Chinese living inside Tibet than natives. Of the six thousand monasteries that existed prior to the occupation, only twelve remain, the rest destroyed, many as a result of target practice by Chinese artillery. Reports had filtered out that the Chinese were sterilizing Tibetan women and also dumping nuclear waste in the country.

  All those things meant little to a Chinese major who stood on the barracks’ stone balcony. He had been stationed in Tibet for another reason altogether. At the moment he was staring at the three people in front of him, then down at the orders he’d been faxed from Beijing. The fax was signed by the president himself, so there was no doubting whether he would comply. The people had arrived via helicopter less than ten minutes ago. The major, who only went by one name in the climbing community — Aksu — was a short wiry man with leathery skin. He had summited Everest twice, once from the south and once from the more difficult northern approach, blazing a new trail in from the northeast, rather than the accepted northwest route. According to these orders, he was to take these people up the northern route.

  Even here, far from the capital, word of the fighting in Korea and Taiwan had reached the major’s ears. He wasn’t certain how these strangers fit into all of that, and the fax explained nothing. It grated on the major that the three were obviously foreigners with their pale skin, red hair, and eyes hidden by sunglasses. Even more than that, though, what truly rankled him was the fact that he could tell they weren’t climbers. And their leader was a woman.

  “Everest is no place for amateurs,” he brusquely informed them. Lexina nodded. “I know.”

  Aksu spit into the gravel that lined the runway. “One of five who go up, die.” “We only need one of us to come back,” Lexina said.

  “Why do you need to go?”

  “We need to recover something from the mountain.”

  “What?”

  “I cannot tell you that.”

  “If you tell me what it is you seek,” Aksu said, “my team will get it.”

  “No. We must go.”

  Aksu turned away from the three and looked to the southwest. The horizon was lined with white peaks, but there was no mistaking Everest. Aksu had been on all sides of the great mountain and there was no doubt that the view was more spectacular from this side. The triangular shape of the peak was visible, despite being over eighty miles away. It was a clear day, which was unusual, as the peaks were normally embroiled in clouds. He also knew, though, that the weather could change in a matter of minutes.

  “It will take two weeks.”

  “We don’t have two weeks,” Lexina said.

  “It is impossible to go any faster. You must spend at the very least a week at base camp to acclimatize to altitude. If you go up too quickly you will suffer cerebral edema. Your brain will swell. You will die.”

  “We have been prepared for the altitude,” Lexina said.

  “The only way to prepare for altitude is to be at altitude,” Aksu said simply. “Major.” Lexina’s voice took on an edge. “You have your orders.”

  Aksu shrugged. “We leave in one hour.”

  Dimona

  The Blackhawk settled down inside the secure perimeter of Dimona and Sherev relaxed slightly. He’d been listening in on the secure military net as they’d flown out of the carnage in Jerusalem. There were those already claiming the suicide attack on the Ark had been the act of Arab terrorists and were clamoring for war, demanding that Israeli conduct a preemptive strike against her surrounding enemies. Sherev thought such thinking and demands premature.

  He was proven right as a new report indicated the pilot was Israeli. A captain. An Orthodox fundamentalist. As several men carried the covered Ark into the bunker, Sherev shook his head. Zealots were dangerous people. He knew they were scared because of reports that the Ark of the Covenant wasn’t made by man as the Bible said. And it wasn’t made according to God’s instructions. And it didn’t carry Moses’ tablets. It was alien. And that meant many things that people believed and underpinned their faith on were lies. Sherev knew that when people’s faith was threatened, the core of their existence was also threatened.

  For the moment he was content to put the Ark back in the vault and wait to see how the burgeoning world war was going to be played out. However, he felt a sense of anxiety deep in the pit of his stomach, knowing full well that inactivity was the worst of all options in military and covert operations.

  The Gulf of Mexico

  Garlin opened the door and gestured for Lisa Duncan to enter the room. He’d retrieved her from the examining room just a moment ago and brought her down a corridor. She saw no one else during the short trip. It was as if the two of them were the only occupants of the new Area 51. The new room held a massive machine with an opening in the center from which a human-sized metal stretcher was extended. A white sheet covered the metal.

  “Have a seat.” Garlin indicated the stretcher.

  Duncan sat down and waited as Garlin washed his hands. He came back with an IV needle.

  “What’s that for?” Duncan asked.

  “We’re going to do several things at the same time and compare the results,” Garlin said. “This machine is not only an MRI but also a CAT scanner and PET.” He continued talking as he expertly slid the needle into the back of her hand. “The MRI will give us not only a cross-section view of your body, but also give us an idea of what’s happening biochemically. This IV will put a solution in that targets the telomerase. The PET scan will give us an idea of what’s happening with that.”

  The IV was in. He rolled over a hanging solution and hooked it to the tube. “Do you know how an MRI works?”

  Duncan shook her head.

  “Three stages. First, you are placed in there.” He indicated the large machine. “It’s a cylindrical magnet that will create a steady magnetic field thirty thousand times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field. Then the body is stimulated with radio waves to change the steady-state orientation of your body’s protons. Then we shut off the radio wave and the machine basically, for lack of a better term, listens to your body, picking up the electromagnetic frequencies emanating from it at certain frequencies.”

  Garlin had his back to her now and was looking inside a black medical bag. “It’s really quite amazing,” Garlin continued.

  “What do you hope to discover?” Duncan asked. The table she was sitting on was cold and she didn’t fancy the idea of lying inside the machine for however long the process took.

  “How your body comes back to life,” Garlin said.

  “What—” Duncan began, but she didn’t get another word out as Garlin spun about, a pistol in his hands and fired, all in one smooth movement. The round hit her in the chest, splintered through a rib, tore a path through her heart, and exited, slamming into the metal wall behind her. The impact knocked her body backwards onto the table and she was dead by the time Garlin walked up to her. He swung her legs up, orienting the body, then pressed the button that slid Duncan’s lifeless body into the machine.

  The Colonel James N. Rowe Special Operations Training Facility

  Turcotte turned his head away from those gathered around the table and peered out of the hangar doors. He was still, as if listening.

  “One of—” Larry Kincaid began to say, but Turcotte held up his hands, indicating silence.

  After a minute, Turcotte shook his head. “I thought I heard something. Or”—he paused, uncertain—“I felt something.” He turned to Kincaid. “What were you going to say?”

  “One of Professor Nabinger’s coordinates is on Mount Ararat,” Kincaid said. He had Che Lu’s notebook and had been examining the information inside.

  The survivors of Area 51 were inside the hangar next to the r
unway. Besides the bouncer, two trailers also filled the inside, cables looping from them to numerous antennas set on the roof of the hangar. Colonel Mickall was also present, coordinating their support through his Delta Force channels.

  The others gathered around as Kincaid made a pencil mark on a map. “Right here.” “The Ahora Gorge.” Yakov read the small letters. The spot was just to the northeast of the peak of the mountain. “It is high up.”

  “About thirteen thousand feet lower than where I’m going,” Turcotte noted. “I have a simple question,” Yakov said.

  “Yes?” Turcotte waited.

  “If this mothership is hidden in a cavern like the one was here, how do I get into this place, considering no one has reported finding it over the centuries?” Turcotte turned to Quinn. “How did they get into the mothership hangar here? And how did they find it in the first place?”

  “They found it,” Quinn said, “when survey teams at the beginning of World War II noticed a magnetic anomaly in the area coming from inside Groom Mountain. They tunneled in and found the cavern and mothership.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Turcotte asked.

  Quinn shrugged. “No. It’s what I was told. It could be a cover story. Who knows what the truth is?”

  “I’m not going to be able to do much tunneling on Ararat,” Yakov said. “How do I get into the cavern?”

  “Demolitions,” Turcotte said. “Otherwise called tunneling in a hurry. Find a cave or a crack or something and blast your way in toward the coordinates.” Yakov frowned. “Not the best plan.”

  “The best we can do right now,” Turcotte said, “and I think the right now is the more important aspect.”

  “We shall see,” Yakov said. “Also…” Turcotte paused. “Yes?” Yakov prompted.

  “There will most likely be others seeking the Ark. Perhaps they will know the way in.”

  Yakov nodded, understanding what Turcotte was telling him.

  Turcotte turned to Kincaid. “Did Che Lu have any coordinates on Everest?” “Not that I can see,” he said. “Nothing close.”